


Opposites

by Mimm



Category: Chrono Trigger
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 01:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13603116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimm/pseuds/Mimm
Summary: A night at a campsite between Melchior's Hut and Heckran's Cave. Or: The first tentative steps towards learning Antipode.





	Opposites

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Healy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Healy/gifts).



Lucca leaned her back against one of the three rocks she and the others had chosen to cover their campsite for the night. The surface felt uneven and cold against her shoulders, so she readjusted her blanket for better cushioning. To her left, a few feet away, stood the tent, its doorway closed now that Crono had crawled back in to join Marle, with Lucca taking the turn to watch the fire. 

Right in front of her, over the tips of the trees, loomed the dark peak of the mountain they had been chasing for a whole day without reaching it. Melchior had described the way to get there and they knew they were still on the right path, but it seemed that no matter how fast they walked, the mountain refused to come closer.

As she tilted her head back, she saw the bright crescent of a moon. The sky was littered with stars, the only constant on their long journey. Even as the terrain changed, even as they moved forward or back in time, at night Lucca could always find the familiar constellations and she knew where she was.

Sighing, she lowered her gaze towards the book in her lap. The fire cast a warm, orange glow around the campsite, and the glow danced on the pages of the book. She tried to make out the schematics of an automaton, something she wished to learn more about since it reminded her of Robo, but the lines were blurred and the words illegible. 

Finding her efforts useless, Lucca put the book aside and instead focused on the fire. Spekkio had said that fire was her personal elemental, and she had learned how to create flames at will, but she had never thought fire to be anything more than a means to get light and warmth. Now it was much more than that.

She looked at it, the dancing flames and the floating bits of ember and ash, and the smoke that rose up towards the sky. There was an odd sensation of familiarity that hadn't been there before, and she frowned. It was only a brief glimpse and gone before she could get a hold of it, but she thought she could almost see the schematics of the fire as if it were a machine. She _understood_.

She picked up her book and focused on creating light. She imagined a flicker of a flame at the tip of her finger, like she was lighting a match to light a candle. For the briefest moment there was light and she could see the picture of the machine, but then the corner of the book caught fire, burning her thumb, and she dropped it. The fire was out immediately, but her thumb still hurt. She cursed under her breath and shook her head. Producing fire and controlling it were two very different things.

There came a rustling sound from somewhere further away, but Lucca couldn't pinpoint the exact direction. There were forests on either side of their path, but with the rocks as their cover the only forest they needed to keep an eye out for was the one on their left. It looked just as peaceful as it had for most of the evening.

Shrugging, Lucca took a piece of a crudely chopped wood in her hand. Like with the book, she concentrated on it to create fire. She slid her finger across the jagged surface, creating a scheme of fire in her mind, then flicked her fingers. The wood caught fire immediately and without hesitation, bursting into a big flame, and Lucca started, dropping the hot piece of wood on her shoe. Frantically, she began kicking at it, shoving it towards the campfire. This was not her night, she thought to herself with mild amusement.

While Lucca's focus had been on the fire, she had failed to keep an eye on the forest, and she jerked a little as she saw a roly poly creeping towards her. She waved a hand at it, throwing out a slew of little sparkles, but they missed the little monster. She tried again, the sparkles bigger now, and judging by the sound the monster made as it scurried away and reached the edge of the forest, some of the fire had landed on it. Lucca gave it a third try but missed, and instead of the roly poly, one of the dry-leaved bushes caught fire.

She let out a yelp before she scrambled for the bush, taking off her vest and trying to beat the fire out before they had a full forest fire to deal with.

"Is everything all right?" she heard a hushed half-shout from behind her. It was Marle. "I smelled smo-- What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" Lucca replied with an exasperated hiss, still beating at the bush with her vest. "The darn thing just caught fire."

"On its own?" Marle asked.

Lucca gave her a glare over her shoulder but refused to answer. As she turned her focus back on the burning bush, she suddenly felt a flood of ice cold water pour over her head and neck, down her spine, and she let out a shriek.

Marle stared at her wide-eyed, her hands on her mouth, and she looked shocked. She took her hands away and grinned awkwardly. "Sorry."

"At least the fire's out," Lucca said. "Thanks."

The vest in her hand was dripping with water, and she wrung it as she walked back towards the campfire, shivering in her now wet shirt.

Marle disappeared inside the tent for a while. Lucca heard Crono mumbling something and Marle telling him to go back to sleep. Soon she came back with an extra blouse in her hand. She offered it to Lucca.

Lucca turned her back towards Marle and inched out of the wet shirt. As she put on Marle's blouse, the fabric softer than anything she had even worn, she shivered at its coolness.

"Give me those," Marle said to her, nodding towards the wet clothes, taking them and spreading them out to dry. While she did that, Lucca picked up her dropped blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"Were you training your magic?" Marle asked as they sat down side by side.

"There are roly polies out there," Lucca replied, and as if to prove her words, there came another rustling sound, but this one seemed to come from behind them.

Marle got up, holding her bow in one hand and a pickaxe in the other, and walked into the narrow space between the two rocks.

"Nothing," she said after a while, turning around, then sharply turning her eyes upwards. "Wait, there's something up there."

"Maybe it's a bat?" Lucca suggested, not fond of the idea, but at least bats weren't dangerous.

"I hope so," Marle said, then gave a little giggle. "Didn't think I'd ever hope for bats."

"You and me both," Lucca agreed with a smile.

She adjusted the fire with a dry twig, making sparkles fly, and then threw it in the flames.

"What's that?" Marle said, and before Lucca had time to ask what Marle meant, Marle had already picked her hand in hers, turning it around with her cool fingers as she inspected it.

"It's nothing," Lucca said, looking at the mild burn in her thumb. All the commotion had made her forget it was actually aching.

"I can heal this now," Marle said, her brows furrowing as she examined the hand like she was a fully certified professional. Lucca had to smile at her earnestness.

Marle muttered something under her breath, sliding her fingers across the burn, and Lucca couldn't help feeling surprised and a little unnerved by the odd sensation. Not only did the ache go away in an instant, but soon her hand felt better than it had in a long time. The bruises, cuts and callouses that had been there a while ago were now completely gone.

"There, good as new," Marle said, looking satisfied with herself.

Lucca flexed her fingers in awe.

"Putting out fires _and_ healing? Some people get all the good stuff. All I can do is burn things, and even that's questionable."

"You'll get better," Marle said. "It just takes practice. If it's any consolation, I still struggle with the big wounds. And with the fire there, I aimed at the bush, not at you."

"But it did the trick," Lucca said. "Thanks again."

"Don't mention it."

They sat in silence for a while, looking at the fire.

"It's strange, though, isn't it?" Marle asked.

"What?"

"Magic," Marle replied. "A few days ago when it rained, I almost felt like I could avoid the drops. Like I could command the water. It didn't last very long, and I thought I was just imagining it, but I'm not so sure about that."

"I know what you mean," Lucca said. "I feel the same with fire. Like I can read it. See what those flames are made of. It's only in glimpses that come and go, but I know it's there."

Marle nodded at her words, then raised her gaze. Lucca followed it and saw that she was looking at the poor bush that was now dripping like it had encountered a very localized rain.

Lucca picked up a log and threw it a few feet away from them. She raised her hand and snapped twice, focusing, and on the third snap a line of fire shot from her hand towards the log. It landed on the dry wood where it took root just the way she had hoped.

"Now you take it out," Lucca said, glancing at Marle.

Marle looked at it with a furrowed brow, clasping her hands, and again she muttered something under her breath. It must have been an incantation of some kind, Lucca thought, a technique very different to hers.

A splash of water materialized seemingly out of nowhere, and it quickly put out the fire Lucca had created. Without hesitation, Lucca snapped her fingers at the wet log, and it caught fire again as if it had been dry all along.

"I wouldn't want to fight you," Marle said, impressed.

"It's not fun being at the other end of your magic, either," Lucca replied, laughing.

There came another rustling sound from above them, as if something was crawling up there on the rock, and Lucca looked up. She saw a red mass and a pair of gleaming eyes, and she reacted in the only way she could: She flicked her fingers at it, and with a loud bang the whole thing simply ripped apart, spattering messy chunks around them.

Lucca stared at the remains of what had probably been nothing more dangerous than a regular hetake. She could have taken it out with a whack of her gun. She noticed Marle was looking just as surprised.

"Was that you?" Lucca asked. "Because it wasn't me."

"I thought it was you. I'm not that good."

They both glanced at the tent, but there was no indication that Crono was awake or aware of what was going on.

Together, they decided to recheck their surroundings for more monsters, hetake or otherwise. Maybe the explosion had been caused by a creature they weren't yet aware of. The thought of that worried them both.

Holding a gun and a torch, Lucca inspected her half of the area, but she couldn't see or hear anything out of the ordinary. She gave Marle an inquisitive look, but Marle shook her head. They returned to the fire.

Up above them, the crescent of the moon had slid a little further, but the dawn was nowhere close.

Lucca tried to rack her brain for any answers as to what had happened. She knew she had used her magic the same way as before. It had felt the same. Yet even when she had felt it, the results were all wrong.

"That hetake. Did you use your magic?" she asked Marle, and Marle nodded.

Lucca took one of the thinner twigs in her hand.

"I'll try casting a fire spell on this," she said. "The moment I do that, you cast your water spell."

"Why?"

"Just testing a theory."

Marle nodded, and Lucca took a deep breath, feeling her palm was getting a little damp.

Right after her fingers made a snapping sound, she saw the twig briefly catch fire, then freeze, and finally it crumbled down in bits.

"Wow," Marle said.

"Yeah," Lucca agreed. "I didn't think it would actually work."

"Was it you or was it me?" Marle asked.

"I think it's the combination of our elements that cast almost simultaneously tear it apart," Lucca said, already getting excited by this new revelation, the same way she did when she figured out a new way to enhance one of her gadgets. "Alone, we're good, but put together..."

"We're amazing," Marle finished, and there was a huge grin on her face.

"Damn right, we are," Lucca said. "Just imagine the possibilities when we combine our magic with Crono's."

"Melchior said we'll need magic to beat that thing," Marle said.

"And we will. We just need to train."

Next to them, the tent door opened and Crono peered out, his hair in a mess.

"Why are you both up? It's not even dawn yet," he asked, yawning widely.

"We're making plans for tomorrow," Marle said. "We have something to show you." 

"Tomorrow," Lucca said. "You should both go back to sleep. It was my turn to watch the fire."

"Sounds good to me," Crono said as he rubbed his eyes with the back of his fist, crawling back inside.

"You too," Lucca said, nodding to Marle.

"You think I can sleep after something like that?" Marle said. "You go ahead if you want. I'll let you know when it's dawn."

Hesitant, Lucca stood up. As excited as she was by the prospect of learning even stronger magic, she could feel her eyes getting dry, and the thought of a warm sleeping bag tempted her. Finally she accepted the offer.

She gave the mountain one final look before crawling inside the dark tent. Outside, she heard Marle's voice as she muttered something under her breath, like reading a chant, and Lucca smiled as she closed her eyes.


End file.
